


Kent Parson and the Comeback Kid

by garden of succulents (staranise)



Series: better than you found them [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Futurefic, Graphic depictions of child abuse, Kidfic, Polyamory, Second Chances, Sports Story, Supportive Marriages, Women's hockey, adults with mental health issues, good parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 14:51:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13238052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranise/pseuds/garden%20of%20succulents
Summary: Andy always thought her career as a hockey player ended years ago. She's 32, and the most hockey she plays is when she stops by the rink after work to play keep-away with her husband. These days she coaches children and cheers for her old teammates and puts on lipstick to sit in the family box for Aces games. Her life is about helping other players reach the top.And then she qualifies for the US Women's National Ice Hockey team.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings for specific scenes (eg. the one with the graphic child abuse) occur at the beginning of the scene, after the scene break.

The Parson-Scarlatti household didn't get much of a break in December. The NHL only paused an extra day between games, which wasn't enough time to go anywhere or do anything. Andy wasn't really into Christmas; Karen wasn't really into Chanukkah; Kent's Solstice observations were quiet and low-key. All three generations used the days off work as an excuse to hide from everyone else and spend a couple days with each other. On the afternoon of Christmas Day Andy got a picture of Kent sleeping on the playroom floor as their two-year-old son drove a toy schoolbus over his stomach, and that was pretty much their highlight. Karen took over care of her grandson again the next day while Kent few to Florida for a game and Andy managed the circus of sports camps that kept Las Vegas's idle schoolchildren busy over the winter break.

The week they really invested their hope of rest in was Kent's bye week in February. They could have gone to Mazatlan with Karen and Kent's sister Katie, but somehow after living in Las Vegas, the prospect of a tropical retreat lacked appeal. Instead Kent and Andy took Nick to Minnesota, to feel cold enough that coming back to Nevada was almost welcome. That week they got to take Nick tobogganing and teach him how to make snowmen, spent two afternoons with Andy's mom and the rest with their friends.

\\_ **.** _/

When Andy lived in Minneapolis, she'd more or less done it in the local rinks. She knew all of them, and their attached recreational complexes, inside and out; Kent got recognized from Wheaties boxes, but Andy rarely made it far inside without being greeted by an old friend. Even when she wasn't playing hockey, Scarlatti was handy, a known commodity, someone you could trust to keep score or patch ice or run a penalty box on a moment's notice. She got pulled into things so easily Kent felt a little guilty for pulling her away from her city.

So when he showed up at the day's rink and found Andy's rental car in the lot but her nowhere in sight and not answering texts, Kent didn't worry; it was another half-hour before she expected him coming. He just saw that one of the rinks was open to parent-and-tot stick'n'puck, paid the drop-in fee, and laced Nick into his skates.

"Oh, buddy," he said, fifteen minutes later as Nick's face crumpled. "I told ya. You really shoulda napped." Nick kept swatting at the puck, coming nowhere near it, and emitting a high-pitched noise on the edge of tears. Kent kept his hands out, half to stop the toddler from falling down and half to make it easy for him to give up and come into a hug.

When someone called, "Parser!" he was just as willing to make a show of looking up, waving at one of Andy's friends, and summarily scooping stick and puck up and steering Nick over to the side of the rink, then pop him up to sit on the boards tucked under Kent's arm.

"Seen Andy?" Terry asked.

"Didn't hear from her. Figured she's still around, but busy," Kent said, handing Nick his car keys to chew on.

"She's playing." Terry tipped his head. "Half the police in the city are working overtime, some nonsense in North Loop, and traffic's fucked, five of the ladies couldn't make it, so Andy put pads on and she's playing for them. In Rink B."

"Yeah," Kent said absently, taking a tissue out of his pocket and swabbing at the snot under Nick's nose. "We got a little stuck in it coming here, got re-routed." Only belatedly did he become aware that Terry was looking at him like he'd missed an important insinuation.

"She doesn't _play_ like she's been out of the game for a decade," Terry said.

"Oh?" Kent looked down at Nick, who was getting restless. "Wanna go see Mommy?"

Nick was so enthusiastic he hardly wanted to wait to get his skates off; once Kent pointed the way he ran, and only stopped in confusion at a crowd of unfamiliar grownups standing around the rink, which did not contain his mother. Kent picked him up and held him against the glass, but when he pointed Andy out, Nick was visibly confused.

Kent's own eyes were playing tricks on him. For a second, Andy was natural and unremarkable and he couldn't see what Terry had wanted him to look at. She even looked a little tired, hesitating, conserving her energy, not pressing her limits like he was used to.

The his eyes re-focused, and he _saw._

It was the way the entire game turned around her. She came up to a logjam behind her own net, stuck her shoulder in one way and her stick in another and fished the puck out like there weren't six other women fighting for it. When she sent it flying down the ice, the women who chased it did so with their heads craned uncertainly back at her. She easily ducked around and accelerated past the player guarding her, but even still, the exhausted woman almost seemed to flinch back and give way for her. When she rolled up in the offensive zone ready to accept a pass, the defense greeted her with wary _Oh shit_ looks on their faces. Her team was up 7-2 with four minutes to go in the 2nd.

Usually Kent would have guessed that that kind of presence on the ice, the space other players granted her, was the result of some rough and dirty play early in the game, or a reputation; but the more he watched, he didn't think that was it. Their elbows weren't up, bodies weren't defensive as she maneuvered around them; she wasn't even playing aggressively. She almost played like they were _irrelevant_ , so firm was she in her bearing; she went where she wanted, stopped when she pleased, put the puck where she willed it, and they were just obstacles. Andy caught the pass despite the pair that came after her, rolling it from the tip of her blade to firm possession as she spun around them, handled away from a third player and slotted it in glove-side like it was easy; she did it like she _breathed._

She dominated that rink.

He recognized her when she wheeled away from that goal, when she was a sweaty, red-faced woman who flashed her son and husband the sweetest smile on her way to the bench.

_I paired her up with Mashkov when we were playing for kicks,_ Kent thought, _and because she couldn't keep up with him I didn't notice how good she was._

He and Nick slotted into a row of bleachers behind the bench, and she turned from pouring water down her throat to smile, take a hand from her glove and touch the glass where Nick waved at her, before shuffling along with the line to the door and heading out again. When she did, an opposing D went off the ice immediately to let a stronger player shuffle past the rest of the line to go on, but she didn't score before the end of the period.

"Jesus," one of the smattering of people in the bleachers said. "What's Mackensie been eating? She didn't play like that before."

"Sub in Mac's jersey," a rink attendant piped up. "Scarlatti."

"Scarlatti didn't play like that in college," Terry said, arriving from another rink.

"Shit," a woman countered, "Scarlatti didn't play like that in _high school._ "

"What, you played with her?"

"In her league for a year, and I was at U of M when she was at St Cloud, but she stood out more when she was younger."

"You're her husband, aren't you?" asked the woman at the end of the row, whose daughter Nick had made tentative friends with. "Parson."

"Yeah. Kent." He reached over and shook hands, then had to do the entire round of greeting.

"She playing in Nevada?" Terry asked.

Kent shrugged. "No women's team out there, so she switched over to roller derby, and she coaches hockey. We just," He shrugged again. It wasn't some elite or fancy training routine; it was just him and Andy. "When we need to unwind sometimes, we hit the ice and throw a puck around."

Terry whistled. U of M woman said, "Must be some throwing."

Andy's team came out early, so Kent went down to the box to see her. Nick was intimidated by her face cage, and touched it fearfully when she took it off; she made a show of him, and some of the women she was playing with came by to coo (overtly at Nick, but Kent felt ogled).

Terry sat by Kent during the third period, when the seat freed up.

"Imagine," he said, as if to the air itself, as though he meant the words to land lightly on Kent’s ears, "what she'd be like if she were competitive now."

\\_ . _/

They talked her into it.

Terry and Mac and Janine said how _great_ it would be to have her in a tournament that weekend, and Kent pointed out that if half the people she was there to see were going to be in Duluth anyway they might as _well_ go and change their flight back, and at the last minute Sarah cancelled the dinner that would have conflicted with practice. She ended up spending sixteen hours playing hockey that week, delighted and charmed to be back, and then they hit her with the real whammy.

Patricia Lee was Andy's teammate in college. While Andy had struggled through the NCAA and gone on to run Twitters and coach children, Patricia was focused and put-together, won the Patty Kazmaier Award and played in the CWHL before being immediately signed when the NWHL started up. She'd moved home to Minneapolis to marry a nice Hmong boy both she and her family were wild about and have two kids in quick succession, but kept working as a performance coach and doing administration for the national women's team.

"It's my first time running camp," Patricia wheedled over the phone as Andy made dinner. "I want a friend there with me."

Andy laughed. "Excuse me, you're friends with _everybody._ Everyone there loves you."

"But you're so isolated," Patricia pleaded. "I could tell you all the worst gossip about everybody, and you're so socially unconnected, it would never get back to them. I need that outlet."

"It's during playoffs," Andy protested, stirring the sauce, though she reached over to knock her knuckles against the cupboard door out of superstitious habit.

"You always say your husband is useless during playoffs. Dump Nick with your mother-in-law and get out of the house. Let one of his boyfriends tend to his needs instead."

Andy paused, then said, "It's the National Selection Camp."

"Yeah, I know. Amy was _at_ the tournament, she saw you, and she wants to bring you on. The coaches want to have a couple wildcards, that's all. It makes everybody work harder if there's an element of uncertainty."

"I'm not sure," Andy said.

Kent talked her into it.

\\_ . _/

And the thing was, she only got as far as she did because she was married to Kent Parson. It was infuriating.

If women's leagues had been like the men's leagues–if there were thousands of paying positions on professional teams, instead of the couple hundred unpaid spots there were when she graduated college, or the couple dozen spots that paid peanuts available now–she might not have ended up among the top of them when she graduated. She wasn't at a good place, mentally or physically, and might have signed with the equivalent of the AHL at 22. She hung out in Minneapolis with AHL players, knew it wasn't a sumptuous living like NHL contracts but it paid rent and beer and protein powder, and the most important part was: Someone would be willing to fund her to work out and train and play hockey all day. She would have done that until she retired, and been happy.

Patricia Lee wrote computer programs during the week, her entire playing career. She did her best to work out and train as much as she could, but the biggest chunk of her working hours was spent writing code. The CWHL didn't pay, back then, but sponsors supplied her with skates and pads and one stick a season, and an NWHL salary let her cut work down to two days a week before she retired. She and the teammates she lived with cooked all their own meals.

Living with Kent, it was so _easy._ The Aces' dietician had a friend whose business was fresh-delivered meal ingredients. The players sat down with Marco to work out their meal plans, and if they handed those meal plans over to Julia, she'd deliver meal ingredients to them daily, already portioned out and peeled and prepared for the skillet. It was like Blue Apron, but more exclusive; Julia made a tidy living from about thirty clients. And when Andy moved in, Marco stopped by her office one day and said, "Hey, Kent paid for Julia just to throw your food in with his, so I wanted to ask, what's your intake? You doing more strength or cardio lately?"

She did roller derby two nights a week, which was as much exercise as some of their players did ever; but she also spent so much time in the weight room at the back of their house, talking to Kent as he pumped iron, that it made sense to get on a machine and do some of the work herself at home, until she also got to know Swoops and Cam and Mikey enough to feel comfortable working out with them on Saturdays at a gym in town. The trainers there knew her, and knew her routine when she worked out with the Aces, so she went weekends the boys were out of town, too. And Kent preferred swimming to distance running after his knee got gummy, and that was easy for her too; so before she knew it, she was working out 20 hours a week, double what she'd been doing before in Minnesota.

Her office was in the Aces practice facility in Henderson. The offices clustered at the side nearest the parking lot, and she had a computer and a desk that she worked at; but the other end of the building was the rink, the gym, the pool, and trainers' space. All Aces staff got access to these facilities when they weren't scheduled for use by the players of community teams, and Andy kept a hockey bag with skates behind her desk. She had to lace up and go out on the ice for the part of her job that meant coaching, but sometimes she went out just to get kinks out of her body and clear her head. By her second year, Kent would often come back from strategy and media in the afternoons, and she'd get her work done by four, and they'd spend an hour on the ice before the children she coached arrived.

They didn't play, not at first. He was so much better than her at hockey–which was kind of hard to avoid, because he was better than almost _anybody_ –that they didn't even try; she didn't _like_ to cry when she got frustrated, but it distressed him to see her working through something, stony-faced, with tears running down her cheeks. Instead they ran drills, usually more of what the team had been working on in the morning–skating, shooting, passing, _anything._ It was too frustrating when Mikey came back and put on his pads for them to score against, because Andy rarely could, but when his knee troubled him Kent played goalie instead.

It was how they relaxed. It kept Kent from showing up at dinner with his teeth clenched and an unsatisfied look on his face; instead he worked out with Andy until his hands shook and his eyes lost their wildness, and he could go home and eat.

They already knew, before she conceived, that she wasn't taking on the bulk of the childcare. She was coaching and often on the road; he took a year off after Nick's birth, scandalized everyone by embellishing knee surgery into actual paternity leave, but even still his mom moved in with them. Andy bore with the tension Karen sometimes generated, because her mother-in-law gave her so much more freedom. And when Kent went back to playing, Andy's time alone with her husband happened in the gym or on the ice, because all other time in their lives had been eaten.

It skewed everything, playing against Kent. Playing against the Aces. They accepted her as one of them, included her in jokes and parties, but Andy was always a little smaller, a little slower, a little less good, and she struggled to keep up with their worst players. When she and Kent played keep-away, it was an experiment for him skating with his bad knee immobilized in a brace, him dragging around the ice like an invalid without a crutch. That gave her enough of an advantage that he still almost always won, but only after a fight.

And anyway, she was retired. Her career was over. She was finished as a hockey player.

So it wasn't until she went up against women who played after work in beer leagues, who fed families and diapered children, who played games on weekends because they couldn't get weekdays off, that she realized how good she was.

\\_ . _/

She was numb after the roster announcement and managed to say a few mechanical things about being honoured and surprised, so it wasn't until she checked her phone and found an email from an NWHL address headed, "Free Agency Options" that Andy actually broke down crying.

Kent answered her videocall instantly and said, "I'm so proud of you," and stayed on the line until Patricia found Andy in the hallway with three of her new teammates behind her and surrounded her with hugs. He did say that he loved her and supported her and they'd talk when she got home, but he also understood when one of Andy's teammates said they needed to go bond now and hung up on him.

They went out for pizza.

\\_ . _/

( **Content warning:** Graphic depiction of child abuse and physical violence)

She'd been to the National Selection Camp once before, a week after she graduated high school. They'd wished her luck on the loudspeaker her last day of classes.

When she didn't make the cut, her dad beat the shit out of her.

She beat the shit out of him too. He was the one who taught her how to fight, boxing gloves in a gym when she was 12, a lifetime of wrestling and dirty tricks and penalty calls he nodded with approval over.

When she got home he grilled her, afternoon to evening, about the week before. He was her coach, and he wanted to go over every last detail of the camp’s selection process, probing for her weaknesses. By 11 pm she got up, her hands in her hoodie pocket, and said, “I’m too tired for this. I’m going to bed.”

He put a flat hand on her shoulder, insisting that she sit, and she shrugged it off. He pushed; she pushed back. He stood in the door; she drove her elbow into his solar plexus. He grabbed her hoodie collar and backhanded her.

She blacked both his eyes.

He only stopped hitting her and let go when she was crumpled on the floor, everything bent into curling up, protecting her stomach and her head, saying brokenly, “Dad, stop. God, _stop_.” And when she took too long to sit up, they both knew she had a concussion from when he hit her head so hard it rebounded off the wall.

“Are you-“ he said, hands out, like he was afraid to touch her, ask. Like he was afraid of what he’d done.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, weak but distinct, and got up.

He followed her to the door of her bedroom, spewing orders and excuses as she threw a few things into the bags that hadn’t been unpacked from the selection camp. She ignored him. He moved aside as she shouldered past him, carrying purse and hockey bag and suitcase and pillow. She left the house with him thundering that he was going to call the cops because she shouldn’t drive.

At the time, she didn’t care. It was almost two hours to her mom’s place, and she stopped once to throw up and buy a big bottle of water, but after a while she sadly concluded the cops weren’t going to pull her over so she’d have to drive the rest of the way herself.

At the apartment she kept grimly pounding on the door (the building’s rear entrance had been propped open with a brick) and tried to come up with her next step if her mom didn’t live there anymore; but eventually Elaine’s boyfriend came to the door in boxers and a t-shirt and let Andy in.

In the morning her mother gave her coffee and took pictures of her injuries and said, “I’ll fix this.”

She didn’t, of course. There was a court judgment against her saying she was unfit to get custody and as her boyfriend pointed out, Andy’s dad could counter-charge her with assault. Andy just kept her head down for the rest of summer, working out at the YMCA and trying to avoid juvie or foster care. She got into the dorms in mid-August for university training camp and in October she turned 18 and it all blew over.

She wasn’t invited to selection camp in the following year. She got sent down to Division III in 2009. She had basically always believed that after that night, her hockey career was all downhill from there.


	2. Chapter 2

At the airport, Nick jumped down and ran for her as soon as he got a clear eyeline. He almost got taken out by a luggage cart before getting within ten feet of her, and Andy sent thanks with her eye contact as the man stopped and let Nick blithely swerve around him.

“Mommy! Mommy!” he exclaimed, as she scooped him up. “What did you bring me?”

Andy laughed and rocked him back and forth, pressing her cheek to his hair. “Hey kiddo,” she said, heart thudding. “I am so happy to see you. I brought you… a giant kiss. You gonna let me give you a big kiss hello?”

He did, pressing his hand over his cheek afterwards to hold it there. “I’m in pull-ups,” he informed her glumly as she walked across the Arrivals area with him on her hip.

“Yeah? You peed yourself a little? Happens to the best of us, buddy,” she said, tightening the arm around Nick so she could lift her other one and reel in her girlfriend.

A few years back, Andy ended her twentieth hockey season in a rec league in Minneapolis and hung up her ice skates in frustration. Half her team were skating for their first season ever, and were carried along by the half who’d been playing since they were little girls. They made great drinking buddies, but she hadn’t been going anywhere as an athlete, and felt a little burned out by having to coach in her rec time over and above her day job coaching teenagers at a hockey academy.

Roller derby gave her a lot of the same things as hockey. It was fast and fun and violent, and played by women who made her laugh so hard she snorted beer out of her nose. But the player base had a deeply different ethos, embracing the weird and wonderful instead of hockey’s straighter laces. When Maida Hombrebueno joined the Sin City Derby Girls, it was the first time she’d willingly participated in a team sport since the age of ten, and Andy might never have met her without it.

Maida spent her summers touring music festivals and New Age gatherings with her boyfriend Luis, a Santeria-practicing guitar player. When she wasn’t rehabilitating injured wild raptors, Maida’s own interests ran to composing slam poetry in indigenous Mexican languages and occult divination.

She was like water in the desert.

Once Andy got over her sense of disorientation with Maida, the feeling of being so far from any familiar cultural referents she didn’t know where she was, she found herself at home. Maida was the teammate she trusted to have her back, the witch who poured blessings on her son’s head. As a lover, she was like a stray cat who just walked into Andy’s house one day and treated her bed like home, filling up her house with warmth and wisdom. When she left, it was on her own time and for her own reasons, but also the certainty that she’d be back. Maida was the only person Andy would trust to take her two-year-old son to the airport and let him wander freely, risking life and limb in the face of baggage carts and many other unknown horrors. Maida treated Nick with a calm, hands-off attentiveness, knew where he was every second, and could–unlike his grandmother–call him back at any minute.

Maida squeezed her in a hug, and Andy breathed in the jasmine perfume behind Maida’s ears, pressing her face into Maida’s hair for a minute before letting go.

“Congratulations,” Maida said, and twined her fingers with Andy’s as they began walking out to the parking lot.

_ We’ll just do the long-distance thing, _ she’d said even before Andy left for the selection camp. No drama, no questions.  _ Unless you don’t want to. But you do what you need. _

“Thanks.” Andy squeezed her hand. “You coming to the game tonight?”

“Oh, no,” Maida said. “You guys have fun. I’ll go home when you guys head out.”

Andy shook her head, smiling. Kent’s friendship with Maida went back almost as many years as he’d known Andy, when he’d started exploring Paganism, and had been lovers with Maida and Luis for years; when he drove out of Las Vegas to their trailer in the desert, it was to escape hockey, to escape being Kent Parson, to escape even the memory of the pressures laid on him in the city. So even after all these years, they never went to Kent’s games. Maida might acknowledge that  _ Andy _ played hockey, but politely treated Kent’s hockey career like a hobby that paled in comparison to everything else about him. She’d rather talk to him about music, xeriscaping, statistics, about the progress of Nick’s potty-training, than let discussion of hockey pass her lips in his presence. “Series is 3-2 us,” she said, just to fill Maida in. “Either they win conference finals and advance to the Cup final tonight, or it goes to another game.”

“Karen’s been trying to pack when she thinks Kent won’t see,” Maida said with dry humour. Kent and Andy were hockey-player superstitious, made uncomfortable by words or actions that implied their teams  _ would _ win; Maida was idiosyncratically superstitious, more likely to believe fate was affected by the phase of the moon and the rains last winter than human actions; Karen didn’t think she was superstitious at all, and liked to be well-prepared ahead of time. Karen therefore struggled to reconcile her son’s habits and her household management, especially during Playoffs. In her opinion, a week’s warning was hardly enough for her to prepare to take Nick to New England so they could be there at the game if Kent won, and the shuttling back and forth between home games and away was a demonic plan specifically designed to torment her. Over the past week Maida had probably been surreptitiously keeping friction between mother and son from erupting, when she wasn’t tending to her birds.

“Grandma’s gonna be so happy when Playoffs are over,” Andy chirped to Nick, who had his arms around her neck and his head against his shoulder. To Maida she asked, “Where’s Kent napping?”

“Swoops’s,” Maida answered. She reached over and rubbed Nick’s back as they got to the car. “Though this one’s not going to be too loud, I think. He was up at six this morning. Be nice if he could–” she mouthed the word  _ nap– _ “this afternoon.”

“Mmm,” Andy agreed, depositing Nick in his carseat. He clung to her, his eyelids drooping. She was already calculating the probability that he’d fall asleep in the car and stay asleep while she carried him inside.

The odds weren’t great, but a girl could hope. It made sense that Kent Parson’s son would be a stubborn little motherfucker, though.

\\_ . _/

“Kent wants to see you before puck drop,” Karen said, as Nick dragged Andy by the hand. His eyes had snapped open just as Andy laid him down on his bed, damnit.

“I know,” Andy said, as she retreated down the hall. “He texted me.” And then she waved as Nick pulled her into the playroom.

She had to admit, privately, that she didn’t always understand her son. His noises didn’t always resolve into  _ words _ in her ears, and she frequently relied on Kent and Karen for translation. She didn’t understand  _ why _ he wanted to do something with a train and a Barbie and a spaceship, and just patiently held the spaceship aloft for him until he took it out of her hands and set it to rest on a toy car. She never knew what his scribbles or Play-doh blobs were supposed to represent, and found herself falling back on phrases like, “That’s a lot of blue!”

And yet, when she sat back on her heels and Maida brought her a cup of tea and a kiss goodbye, she said, “I’ve decided? I think I actually am a better parent than my parents were.”

“Yeah,” Maida said, and squeezed her shoulder. “Karen wanted me to remind you that you’ve only got two hours before the team goes in for strategy.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll get dressed soon.” Andy squeezed Maida’s hand, and kissed it. “Drive safe.”

\\_ . _/

Kent and Andy had an entire closet for jerseys. It was sentimental and a bit ridiculous, but there it was. Some jerseys got special treatment; his first Olympic jersey, framed with team picture and silver medal, hung in his den. One of her NCAA jerseys, and the award plaque she won that season, had the same treatment in her work office. But after a while there got to be so  _ many _ –and not all fit for public display, like the All-Star jersey from a few years back with bloodstains on one side and a little penis drawn on the other in Sharpie. This was where her new Team USA jersey went when she pulled it out of its plastic wrapping, buried her nose in the fabric, and then slipped it onto a hanger.

Her chin trembled a little when she indulged in a whim and pulled out one of Kent’s IIHF Worlds jerseys. It wasn’t the same–different year, old logo, different neck decoration. But both jerseys were the same colour. Same team. PARSON, across one back. SCARLATTI, across the other.

She put them back in the closet and sighed wistfully. There used to be a time when she’d just throw one of them on over a pair of jeans and sit down in the stands with a hot dog and a beer. It was comfortable and familiar. She still did it for a lot of games and tournaments, but not NHL games, especially not Aces games, anymore. Instead she put her curling iron on to heat and stepped into the shower.

Kent didn’t care what she wore. Or, that was, when his opinion was a deciding factor he preferred her in a jersey as God intended her. But he was a player, not a fat woman being spectated as a spectator. His fashion choices during a game didn’t get dissected the way hers did. When she wore a jersey, his Twitter mentions didn’t fill up with messages about her looking ugly and slovenly the way hers did. He didn’t have bosses in the Aces Foundation making nervous comments about “professional attire” and “media image” the way she did. So when he was around he didn’t comment on it, just helped her pull her Spanx on and zipped up her dresses.

_ Almost over, _ she consoled herself, blending her makeup.

\\_ . _/

Even the lower passages and back hallways of the arena sparked with life. This was an important game, and Las Vegas  _ knew it. _ Andy waved to familiar faces–parking lot attendants, security guards, janitors in her husband’s jersey. As she came down the tunnel the boom of the music playing hit her before the scrape of skates and smack of sticks did.

Jorge, the towel boy, nodded to her as she came down to the players’ box, but the coaches and trainer there–Harry, Mel, and Luc–were too busy watching the ice with eagle eyes and conferring over their notes. The box was otherwise empty as the team warmed up. Andy went to lean on the boards and look out.

Swoops was still wearing fairy wings pinned to the back of his jersey, the way he had at warmups for the last three games. It was a bet Andy didn’t fully understand. Dmytro was lying on his back and cycling his legs through the air, pretending that his jersey  _ totally accidentally _ fell back and exposed his abs. Gordie’s glove hand was still moving a little slowly when he windmilled, and therefore unsurprisingly, the backup kid they’d called up last night was nervously stretching on an empty patch of ice.

Kent was–

Kent skated away from a consultation with a rookie, snatched a puck, handled it over to the lineup to shoot on Gordie. Kent kept drawing her eye, and not just because he was hers. Kent was–

His jersey was missing the Nevada patch on the shoulder, the extra stripe of white at the bottom. Its sleeves were straight, not shaped the way they’d been for the last three years. The sides didn’t have the subtly greyer panel the Aces were wearing this season. It looked retro, and it hung on him a little looser than normal, and there were what looked like scuff marks all over it, and–

SCARLATTI, it said. 14

Kent sank the puck over Gordie’s glove, shook his head sympathetically, looked over to the callup kid, who looked like he was about to puke. Kent was on his way over to him when he noticed Andy.

Almost a decade ago she’d slept with him for the two weeks between conference finals and Cup final, slept with him a few times after, and then kissed him goodbye and moved back to Minnesota for four years. As a parting gift, he’d asked the team shop to custom make a jersey with her name and habitual number, to remember her year with the Aces by. A lot of the guys had signed it for her.

He’d felt self-conscious about giving her his own number and didn’t want him wearing anybody else’s, he’d said. But she’d always hugged a secret little hope to her chest when she wore it: that he put her own number on it because he took her a little seriously as a hockey player.

“You stole my jersey,” she said through tears when he skated up.

He just grinned and wrapped her up in a hug over the boards, murmuring thanks when Jorge took the stick out of his hand. She hugged him back and gripped big handfuls of the fabric.

“I am so proud of you,” he said. “You’re gonna get everything you need to play. We’re gonna figure it out.”

“I’m wearing mascara, you asshole,” she sobbed. He let her go so she could turn away and grab one of the bench tissues and turn back to him while she was crying. “I did actually know that.”

“You… did?” the man wearing her jersey asked.

“I know, right?” she asked, blowing her nose. “On the plane back I just thought… you didn’t actually  _ say _ , but I just thought. If I made the team, and you were like, no, we can’t make it work, your career is more important, after you  _ told _ me to go? I’d be so fucking angry with you. You’d be an asshole.” She sniffed mightily and swabbed at her face. She’d been smart; she’d used waterproof mascara, though she hadn’t remembered it at first. “So it turns out I actually have, like. Expectations? And I…” she started crying again. “I actually believed you were gonna believe in me and support me? Even before you said so?”

“ _ Babe, _ ” he said, and gathered her in again reverently. She leaned against his chest, holding tissues to her face, even when she felt him slide back on his skates and have to re-set his feet. She thought about the fact that their entire exchange had just been videotaped and clips of it had probably already been broadcast, but wasn’t  _ too _ troubled. Kent was shielding her; her face was safely hidden in his shoulder, and the jersey he’d chosen to warm up in told the story itself. Maybe he’d anticipated that. The media were going to want visuals to go with the story, and there had already been stories about the surprise addition to the roster before she boarded the plane back to Las Vegas. He’d already known they’d have to present an image as a team.

They just moved to the side for the first guy who came skating back to the bench, so he could step around Kent, but when it became clear this was a general exodus Andy sighed and straightened up and Kent let her go.

“I love you,” he said.

She set her hands on his chest, gripping her jersey, and thumped him a little. “You make me proud tonight. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, touched her chin, and she let him go.

\\_ . _/

Andy blotted her eyes with a paper towel soaked in cold water, and then when she got up to the family box she looked for Valentyna. It was a lively box tonight–all the wives, most of the girlfriends, the callup goalie kid’s parents, various friends and hangers-on. Nick and Karen weren’t there yet, but Oksana and a couple other kids had pulled out the big Rubbermaid bin of Duplo from behind the bar and started playing with it already.

It took one look–it looked like Valentyna had been waiting for her–before Dmytro’s wife was pulling out her glass makeup case and coming up to one of the tables in the back of the box. She adjusted the overhead light to shine on Andy’s face, frowning at its inadequacies as Andy meekly sat on one of the tall stools.

“You TV interview?” Valentyna asked, snapping open her case. Before her marriage she’d been a model in Kiev, and worked as a makeup artist when she couldn’t get modelling gigs. (Somehow, Ukraine had hundreds of women  _ more _ beautiful than Valentyna Mykhailuk) She was normally shy around the other Aces wives, partly because of the language barrier, but their children were friends only six months apart, and watching Andy struggle with makeup alone had pushed her past her limits. Before the big games, Andy had to pass Valentyna’s inspection before being allowed out to the front of the box.

“No,” Andy said, squirming a little. “And no big eyeliner wings, Valentyna.”

“Accentuates face,” Valentyna said. “National team! Patriotic hero!  _ Ought  _ to interview you.”

“ _ My _ face,” Andy said. “ _ My _ eyeliner.” And then, as Valentyna loaded up a brush: “Thank you.”

“Will miss you,” Valentyna said matter-of-factly, and then had to pause to let Andy wipe away tears again.

\\_ . _/

She got one interview that night, as it turned out, as well as going down into the stands because a group of girls had hastily written on the back of their posterboard sign, ANDY SCARLATTI COME SIGN MY JERSEY. They played on a U18 team together in Ontario, and got playoff tickets as part of what they described as “the most amazing vacation  _ ever. _ ” Then she hustled back up to the press box.

Sam Park was the veteran holding down the  _ Las Vegas Star’s _ sports reporting, which meant he bounced from NHL and WNBA games and the local Little League games and initiation hockey tournaments Andy’s office either organized, oversaw, or sponsored. They’d last texted two weeks ago when she’d given him the name of a good local flooring contractor for his house, and tonight he sent,  _ Willing to come down to the press box and talk as a member of Team USA? _

An interview with an old friend like Sam was a good starting place. He liked wordy character pieces more than brief sports reporting, so he listened with interest as she threw a new light on their acquaintance–how she worked with the Aces in 2010 because she’d always known she’d have to get a paid job after her college sports career, and left in 2011 in part because of the lack of local women’s hockey; the growth of professional leagues for women, and differences between men and women’s hockey. How her office at the Aces foundation being literally a hundred feet from the team’s practice ice meant she could go out and skate at lunchtime if she wanted, and how those hours and her time playing keep-away with Kent before the teams she coached showed up were often more player development than other women just as skilled as her could afford.

She kept quiet about her speculation about next season, though Kent had already spoken about it. In an attempt to distract the press during the first intermission from the emotional crisis their new goalie was having in the dressing room, Kent had stepped out for a brief media scrum. When asked how Andy’s selection to Team USA would affect his plans for next season, he’d shrugged and clasped his hands behind his back

“We haven’t settled on any details, but, y'know, I wanna support my wife,” he said. “I’ve had ten years of support to be the best player I can be, best coaching, best training, on the best team in the best league. So I think, y'know what, fair’s fair.” Then, having done his best to ensure rumours of his retirement would bump clips of the kid having a panic attack on the bench from the reporting, he’d smiled and slipped back into the dressing room.

Sam was softballing her, probably planning a series of articles if the story generated much interest. He wanted to know about her family, her friends, her new teammates.

“Have you seen this?” he asked, offering her his phone.

Lansing Cougars @mi_girlshockey · 2h

So proud of my daughter #AndreaScarlatti for being selected to #USNWT #TeamUSA!

For a minute she smiled, under the assumption that someone running a girls’ hockey account in Michigan had hyperbolically claimed her as their daughter. Then she read the sidebar with the account information. The realization that it was the team her dad was coaching now–that it meant “daughter”  _ literally _ –wiped the smile from her face.

She wanted to snatch the phone up in a typing grip and fire back a response.  _ Fuck you, _ she wanted to say.  _ You don’t get to claim any part in this. I did this  _ _ despite _ _ you. _ This was exactly the kind of bullshit that made her block her father on Twitter every time she figured out what his new handle was.

Instead she let the impulse pass through her, and when she could, she consciously relaxed her grip on the phone. She put effort into breathing normally, sitting back in her chair, offering the phone back to him. “No comment,” she said casually.

_ How like him, _ he thought,  _ to name an account after the girls he’s coaching and use it as his own personal mouthpiece. _

Sam’s eyebrows flicked up. “No comment?” he asked. “That’s… not like you.”

She made sure to take a full breath and double-check her response. What did she want to say? This was Sam, right; Sam who was writing a book about the Aces, Sam who hadn’t written a word about Vladimir’s breakdown despite witnessing some of it himself. Then she smiled, a little strained. “When I’m ready to talk about that? You’re one of the people I’ll talk to. But right now I think it’s wise to leave him out of the story.”

Sam looked a little concerned, like he was going to ask her if she was really okay, but Andy was saved by the airhorn. The game was back on.

\\_ . _/

When the game was over Andy kissed and hugged her son goodbye, and headed downstairs. Nick was under Valentyna’s watchful eye, and would be going home with her, Oksana, and Dmytro tonight. Western Conference Finals, win or lose, were Kent and Andy’s date night by very ancient compact. The other guys would tease Dmytro about not wanting to go out and party, but the same way they teased Kent: good-naturedly, and without a real intent to make him change his mind. Andy was grateful to the Mykhailuks and said so. Karen split off in the hallway to party with another group of middle-aged “wine grandmas”.

When Kent met her in the hallway to the parking lot, his suit was rumpled and slightly damp with champagne spray. He grinned sheepishly and laced their hands together.

“Good game,” she said, kissed his cheek and looked up. “Oh, hey Gordie, good effort. Tough luck. Rest that shoulder, hey?”

“Thanks, Ands,” Gordie said, dredging up the ghost of a smile, and shouldered past them. Dmytro came out, his phone in his hand.

Then Valentyna came down one of the staircases with the kids and Nick caught sight of Kent and shrieked, “Daddy!”

“Oh, dear,” Andy sighed under her breath, as Kent crouched down to receive Nick in a running hug.

“Daddy  _ won! _ ” Nick said, hugging him. “Good game, Daddy!”

“Yeah,” Kent said. “Thank you! You gonna go home with Oksana and have a sleepover?”

“No,” Nick said.

“Yeah,” Kent encouraged. “You’re gonna go home with Valentyna and sleep over at our place, and see me and Mommy next morning.”

“Don’t  _ wanna, _ ” Nick said, and then something low and incomprehensible that Kent listened to with a furrowed brow. He scowled when Kent said something softly back, and then balled up one fist and hit his father’s shoulder with it.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Kent said. “Hands aren’t for hitting. Gentle hands.”

“Daddy  _ mean, _ ” Nick said accusingly. He stopped to consider his actions, weighing righteous fury against fear of consequences, and hit Kent again with his face screwed up for tears.

_ This is my fault, _ Andy thought suddenly.  _ I’ve been away for a week. He’s upset because I’ve never been gone that long. That’s why he’s wearing pull-ups. He hasn’t tried to pull a stunt like this for months. It’s because of me. _

Kent sighed, hitching Nick up into a surer grasp, and turned to the side to let a few other players by. He took a minute to rub Nick’s back and close his eyes. “I love you, little man,” he said, and then, muttered to himself under his breath: “I cannot take away your pain. I can only sit with you and teach you how to feel it.” When he opened his eyes again it was to meet Andy’s eyes with a wry expression. He jerked his head to Valentyna, and they started walking to the parking lot together.

“I don’t know what books they have at Oksana’s house,” Kent said as they walked. “I wonder what you’re gonna read together. You’ve got Goodnight Moon and I Am Not a Chair with you, you could read those. But you might read one of Oksana’s books.”

“No,” Nick whined, but his strength was fading. He was collapsing into Kent, tiredness replacing anger.

“Which one would you rather read?” Kent kept going with that gentle voice. “Goodnight Moon or I Am Not a Chair?”

“…Chair,” Nick conceded, as Kent pulled open the back door to Valentyna’s sedan. Nick’s car seat was already in it so Kent settled him in, while Oksana climbed into hers on her own. “An’ also Goodnight Moon.”

“Yeah, you want both books?” Kent looked over to Valentyna as she buckled Oksana in. “Do you think you can read two?”

“I think so,” she said, and leaned forward as Kent drew back. “We gonna read two books?”

“Yeah,” Nick said softly. “I love you, Daddy.”

“Love you too, little man. Night, Oksana.”

Andy stood back, watching with a sense of wonder as Kent closed the car door. He came back to join her with a crooked smile, and they started walking to their car in the other direction as Dmytro started his sedan. They glanced back to watch it reverse out, then drive away.

“I thought we were seriously done for,” Andy said, taking Kent’s hand. “How did you do that?”

“I mighta let him come back with us, to be honest,” he said. “Even though we’ve got stuff to talk about. He missed you. Coulda put him to bed first. But then he hit me, and we talked last week about how hitting  _ never _ gets him what he wants.” He slipped into the passenger seat of the car, and resumed once he and Andy had their seatbelts on. “I think as soon as he hit me, he knew it was over. I was gonna have to make a stand. So then he gave in pretty fast.”

Andy sighed. “I feel so bad. He was probably more upset because I was away.”

Kent rolled his head against his headrest to look over at her. “Babe? Welcome to how I feel  _ all the time. _ ”

Their drive home was quiet, nerves on her part and pleasant weariness on his. Because they were old, they changed out of their nice clothes as soon as they got in the door and changed into pyjamas. Kent fed the animals and poured a drink out onto his altar to the gods of luck, then stretched out his legs on the couch so Kit Purrson could have the seat she was actively agitating for. Andy brought him a cold pack for his knee first, and then the homemade pizza the oven had been programmed to have ready for them when they got home, and finally two glasses of rosé. She’d sat down when he said, “I wanna see your jersey,” and then she had to get up again.

“Sorry,” he said when she came back, taking her hand and kissing it. She let him, and then handed the jersey over and picked up her wine.

“Shit,” he said after a minute. He was tracing the number on the sleeve.

“They, uh,” she said nervously, twisting her wedding ring. “It got us to list three jersey numbers by preference, and then they got assigned based on seniority. And there’s a lot of competition for the lower numbers, and Bri’s played under number fourteen forever, so I…”

“Dude.” Kent looked up at her, eyes shining, hands still gripping the 90. “You’re wearing my number. It’s not even your birth year.”

“Fair’s fair,” she finally got out past her tongue.

Then she had to lean forward so he could kiss her, and they both cried a little bit, and then it seemed like they were really talking about how to do this.

“I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m afraid like, you’ll organize some big trade to another team, and we’ll change our whole lives, and move everyone, and then I’ll get cut from the team in October.” She made a little cutting gesture with her hands. “Whoops! I thought I had a career, but I don’t.”

“It’d still be worth it,” he said. “Even just having that chance.”

Andy reached back and wrapped her hands around the nape of her neck. “It would be so fucking  _ embarrassing. _ It’s not us, it’s the fucking  _ commentators. _ They’re just…” She rubbed her face. “I don’t want to do something we’re gonna regret, or that you’re gonna resent me for, in case it doesn’t work out.”

“Okay,” he said, like that was easy. “What are our options?”

“I mean like, technically…” she laughed nervously, picking up a pizza crust. “I still have one year of NCAA eligibility, I think? But I mean, that’s not…”

“Yeah, no,” he agreed, stroking his cat.

“If it were an Olympic year…” she paused. “Well I mean, I wouldn’t get  _ on _ in an Olympic year, because it’s just that much more intense. But then the players take the whole season to build together. Whereas now there’s a training camp, and then everybody’s off to their regular team until the 4 Nations Cup. So unless I wanna stick around here and keep training with you… The N, the C-dub, the Russians, or China. I mean, I could play in Minnesota, but…”

“Everything we’re hearing from Patty says their league might not last the year,” Kent agreed. “And you might not wanna be around for the implosion.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “As nice as it would be to be home. So. Realistically? Um. Because, all of the NWHL teams have expressed interest in me. But then it’s like, the two body problem. Boston can’t afford you. The Sabres aren’t a good team right now. Connecticut doesn’t have a team at all so then you’re commuting, or I am. And you…” she trailed off when he lifted a hand, asking to jump in.

“I want to retire,” Kent said.

She blinked at him, and then reassembled her face into something empathetic and supportive and ate her pizza crust. He smiled and poked her knee with his toes, because he liked to make fun of her Listening Face.

“I might as well admit it,” he said. “I did this season out of spite. When I came back after my paternity year, people were just… so shitty. Everything they said or did was like, ‘Oh, losing his edge.’ By the end of the year I was so pissed I just… didn’t want to prove them right with that shitty season. So I came back.” His face twisted. “And now Nick has nightmares where I’m dead.”

“Honey,” Andy said. “He hasn’t had those for…”

“Okay, but he  _ did _ ,” Kent said. “And I’m just… wondering how many more seasons I might’ve put him through if I hadn’t got that far. But now I’m here, and it’s…”

Andy reached out and squeezed his foot while he searched for words, and then topped up his wineglass.

“There’s this art studio in Rochester,” Kent said. “It’s in the building where Katie works. It’s like, a family creative space. Child-led play. You take your kid in and there’s all these art materials around, and the person teaches you how to make like, a popsicle stick picture or fingerpaints or whatever. But the point isn’t the art, it’s like… teaching your child to explore. How to let them be creative while you’re there supporting them but not smothering or anything. She sends me snapchats about it. I wanna go there.”

Andy started on her second crust, puzzled but willing to hear him out.

“I just hate how like…  _ all _ of my time with him is chopped up and scheduled and he’s always tired and we can never just  _ be _ together. After the summers it’s almost worse because then he’s used to me being around and he’s like, 'Where did Daddy go?’ What I want is the time to just wake up and decide we’re gonna fingerpaint today, and he never has to worry about when I’m gonna  _ leave. _ ”

“You wanna be a stay-at-home dad again,” Andy said slowly.

Kent paused to think about that, and then looked at her again with something almost fervent. “There’s been so many times since he was born that I’ve been on the ice and asked myself, 'What the hell am I doing here? I’ve got important things I need to do!’ It’s like… being around Nick feels  _ important _ in a way hockey hasn’t in years. Even when he’s just sleeping. Something changes about him every day, and I  _ love _ being able to catch it. It kills me every time Mom has to send me a video of something he learned to do without me.”

“Shit,” Andy said. “I thought you were doing okay.”

Kent shrugged, a little helplessly. “I think I repressed a lot. But also like, he’s just gotten so  _ interesting _ now. He’s inventing stuff and coming up with  _ ideas _ , and more and more I’m like, I don’t wanna miss this. I wanna be there for this. I wanna get to know him.” He picked at his nails and looked up at her. “I spent all these years wishing I had people who loved me, who took care of me, who needed me. And now I’ve finally got you and under all the competition there’s a little bit of me that’s like, fuck, why  _ can’t _ I rest on my laurels? Why do I have to get another season out like I’m wringing out a dishrag?” He rolled his head back and sighed. “I am so fucking glad we won tonight, because that might be the only way I’m brave enough to say this.”

Andy wasn’t good at accepting the fact that Kent loved her. It was like she was coated with an impermeable resin, and that love only seeped in when it cracked and flaked with age. But she didn’t think it was just that difficulty that left her feeling that Kent’s love for Nick was so much deeper than his love for her.

She wasn’t jealous. It wasn’t a competition. In some ways it felt like how the world ought to be. It was just a kind of realization:  _ If Kent and I divorced, he’d hurt a lot, but then he’d live again. If he lost Nick, he’d never recover. _ The immensity of that secondhand love was so deep that it threatened to overwhelm her, and she was kind of humbled just to witness it.

_ It’s gotta be good, _ some part of her thought.  _ It overcame his pride  _ _ and _ _ his workaholism. _

“So,” she said, voice rusty. “Rochester. How far is that from Buffalo?”


End file.
